Feb 2023
Professor of Geosystem Science in the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment and the Department of Physics, University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative
In a remarkably short space of time, net zero has become common currency. Yet as net zero commitments have proliferated, so has confusion about what net zero actually means. I will explain what we originally meant by net zero: what it will take to achieve a durable halt to global warming. A durable net zero cannot rely on offsetting continued fossil fuel use with afforestation or nature-based solutions: the capacity of the biosphere to absorb geological-origin carbon dioxide is limited, and even the definition of biological carbon dioxide removals is contestable. If it is to deliver our climate goals, net zero must therefore encompass geological net zero, a state in which, for every tonne of carbon dioxide still generated from fossil sources, one tonne is permanently restored to the geosphere, or solid earth, through carbon capture and geological storage, remineralisation or equally permanent disposal. A global Alliance for Geological Net Zero may be the only way to stop fossil fuels from causing further global warming in time to meet Paris Agreement goals and could, therefore, represent a crowning achievement of the Circular Carbon Economy.
Described by the BBC as "the physicist behind net zero" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgcn), Myles has been studying how human activities and natural drivers contribute to changes in global climate and weather since the early 1990s. In 2005, Myles first proposed the concept of a global carbon budget: that peak warming is largely determined by the total amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, not the rate of emissions or the atmospheric concentration in any given year. He has long argued that fossil fuel producers should be seen as central to the solution to climate change, rather than just part of the problem, but enabling this outcome requires policy innovation: e.g. https://go.ted.com/mylesallen. In 2010 he was awarded the Appleton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics and in 2022 a CBE for services to climate change prediction, attribution and net zero. Myles is a Professor of Geosystem Science in the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment and the Department of Physics, University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative.